Electronics tray

A plate that holds a set of boards, modules, terminals and power adapters, laid out so every cable gets out.

One printed plate for a whole project’s electronics: boards, relay and buck modules, barrier strips, WAGO lever connectors and barrel-jack adapters, as many of each as you set. Every part is held the way its board mount would hold it — snap pins or self-tapping screws in its holes, clamp bars across a board with none, a press-fit pocket for a lever connector, a cable tie for an adapter whose size varies — and every number comes from the part’s own drawing.

Every cable gets out. The parts go in two rows along the tray’s long edges, each turned so the side most of its connectors leave by faces out over the edge, where the cables hang free. Every connector keeps Cable room clear past it for its plug and the cable’s bend, and nothing else on the tray is placed there: a connector on a part’s other side gets that room as the gap to its neighbour, and a barrier strip wired from both sides gets it across the aisle between the rows.

Pins down is how most pre-soldered boards arrive, and with Headers on Pins down such a board is mounted upside down, pins up, so dupont wires plug in from above. Its buttons are reached through holes in the tray. A tray you add from the Generate panel starts from the Board headers choice in your account settings (Editor preferences), and keeps its own setting after that.

The read-outs say how big the tray came out, how many pins and bars to print, and whether anything could not be held — a part no clamp bar can cross clear of its pins and plugs is named, rather than left loose. Rim height adds a wall around the tray, open wherever a cable leaves, and the corner holes take M4 screws to fix the tray down.

1. Open the Generate panel from the left sidebar and choose Electronics tray (under Mounts).
2. The tray drops in as one editable part, with its snap pins and clamp bars laid out beside it. The parameters open in the Properties panel, where you set them.
3. Under Boards, Modules, Terminals and Power, set how many of each part the tray holds.
4. Under Mounting holes and Headers, choose how the boards are held, as for a board mount.
5. Set the cable room, the spacing and the rim height, then print the tray with its pins and bars.